Sunday, April 16, 2017

‘Star Wars’ Moisture Vaporators Are Now a Reality

~ hehe isn't "it" funny how shit is slowlyyyyyyyyy "released " in the old days from "books" & NOW in ...movies drip ,drip ,Drip ,DRIP ? yea i know "it's" all just an co~in~cee~dence yup yea yep sherrrrrrrrrrr

Remember Luke Skywalker’s aunt Beru
and uncle Owen? They were moisture farmers who used incredible devices
called moisture vaporators to pull drinkable water directly out of the
arid Tatooine air.

Owen and Beru Lars

Sure, it was a minor detail mentioned
only in passing a few times, but it likely inspired this recent
invention (at least I hope so). According to a press release, UC
Berkeley scientists have made those moisture vaporators a reality. Aside from pleasing Star Wars
nerds, however, this invention has the potential to revolutionize how
human beings collect water and could provide much needed relief for
areas in which water is scarce.

The prototype water harvester, built at MIT using materials engineered at UC Berkeley.

The solar-powered device uses a
special material called a metal-organic framework (MOF), which is
essentially a lattice of metal ions and organic molecules. These unique
materials can pull 2.8 liters of water out of ambient air in just twelve
hours – even with humidity levels as low as 20 to 30 percent.

Metal-organic
frameworks, or MOFs, are a special type of chemical lattice which
combines metals and organic compounds called ligands.

While tests have so far been small,
researchers are planning to test them on a much larger scale. According
to UC Berkeley chemistry professor Omar Yaghi, one of the authors of the
published study detailing this groundbreaking invention, the device could be scaled up to provide water for an entire house:

One vision for the future
is to have water off-grid, where you have a device at home running on
ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a
household. There is a lot of potential for scaling up the amount of
water that is being harvested. It is just a matter of further
engineering now.

Don’t tell Nestlé.
It makes you wonder though – if every house has one of these devices on
its roof, what will happen to the global water cycle? Could they
eventually pull too much water out of the air, disrupting climate
cycles? Someone a lot smarter than me will have to work that one out.
Whatever the fate of the device will be, it’s one more example of how science
fiction has for decades served as a source of technological inspiration
for inventors and engineers. Last year, the XPRIZE foundation launched a
competition that pitted teams against one another to invent a working tricorder medical scanner straight out of Star Trek; meanwhile, NASA scientists are reportedly developing working tractor beams, a staple of space operas. No word on working lightsabers yet, though. The last thing we need is more ways to kill each other.